


catharsis

by hertorpor



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Blood, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Rhys Jacks It to Handsome Jack Poster, Surgery, a lot of greek mythology references, a lot of symbolism, poetic prose, the beginning is pretty damn graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:58:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4246863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hertorpor/pseuds/hertorpor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody was scrambling for the Hyperion crown. Rhys was hauling ass trying to secure his position on that empty throne. Well, that was until Handsome Jack, in the form of a holographic AI, decided to play backseat driver. And how could his biggest fan say 'no' to his whim?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the one in my soul devours me

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't my first rodeo when it comes to Rhys and Handsome Jack, nor is it my first Borderlands fanfiction, but it's the first one I've published and not felt complete shame at the product. This is meant to be from Rhys' POV. And showcase how much of an unreliable narrator he is. I wanted this to be an explorative piece about Rhys and his past! But I need your support if you want me to continue writing this! So please, add kudos/bookmark/add comments. The second chapter is coming soon, and it'll be an introduction to Handsome Jack! In a way.. :') Stay tuned, because this opening scene will tie together with everything else I swear.

 

 

>  "Hey! Rhys! Buddy!"

Red, red, red. Their entire bodies lit up in that color, as though the blood effusing from his once-bare joint had dyed their skin, their uniforms, the whites of their eyes all one color. Distress was evident in the contorted musculature in Vaughn's face, lips moving, and where words should've been only the mechanical hum of machines rested. Rhys could only gape, his flesh-and-blood hand thrashing in every which way. All coherent perceptions were blotted out with the white of unfettered agony. Oh, god, the red. He could imagine the severed artery responsible for the mess, likely where the new Hyperion apparatus met his skin. A hand pressed just shy of his pectorals was meant to stabilize Rhys, who was not aware how far his back bowed away from the invariable sheets of the hospital bed or how loud his shivery howl had grown. His mouth felt caked and dripping, with slow tendril strands of his own blood and freeflowing saliva intermingling on the slope of his chin. It choked him sometimes, made him sputter between the raspy cries. They soon died in his throat, and he made a guttural drowned noise like his strength had been completely sapped from him and he did not have enough to cry anymore. The smell of blood was cloying. Choking. 

But the fact remained that Rhys was tired of being a part of a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished _**masterpiece**_ left behind by Handsome Jack. Though he strained every ligament in his being, as if that stress would somehow shield him of some pain, he still mutely reassured himself that this would not be in vain! Well, he would later. At the moment, any comprehensible thought was lost in his fit. Soon, though, he would feel that now his fate was sealed: he would not die Hyperion's code monkey. Before his augmentation, he had kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of that boring life of a Hyperion desk jockey, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. Climbing to the top of the corporate food chain seemed to be a pipe dream. Every morning when he awoke he thought "today would be the day"; he listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing came of his methodicalness; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, he longed for tomorrow. Now, with this new augment, he did not know toward what shore it would bear him or what kind of craft it would be – tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with fragmented floorboards or filled to the gunwhales with power. Those expectations would be invigorating later. When he was lucid. But right now, the thought only crossed his mind for an infinitesimal moment before slipping into the fire every other thought and reassurance had. His lashing grew sluggish, but his breath came out in disordered huffs.

A female, who was 42 and, the ECHOeye chirped idly, whose blood type was O, attempted to subdue his thrashing form adjacent to Vaughn. Or where Vaughn had been. Maybe they sent him out? He wasn't there. A lapse in his cognition of time. Rhys felt his teeth clack together sickeningly and sparks overwhelmed a passing fear of chipped teeth. He asked himself over and over why he was still conscious until processing words became nigh impossible. Inwardly, there was nothing but the beehives of his nerves and the understanding of the color red. He screamed abruptly. The Hyperion arm, once stationary at his side, had begun to respond to his random commands. It functioned. Which took the team of doctors who had began accumulating at his side by surprise. With every motion the metal appendage, pain flared from the junction where metal met skin. Hands descended upon it, and he felt every cell against the hardware. Their combined force only slowed its activity. It felt as if it would snap off his joint, like he were one of those ball-jointed dolls young children like. 

If he was truly making the words he intended to with his quibbling mouth, he would have been saying, nay, shouting 'stop' like a mantra. The red was so thick and opaque now, his eyes shot open as wide as they'd go, trying to take in as much light as they possibly could. Finding nothing but that color. Blindly, he was crying. And that wasn't really a great idea with a festering wound in the space where his old eye once was. Every pull and push of flesh that made the flesh around his eye become taut sent explosions of head-splitting pressure, and his mouth struggled to grasp around consonants and syllables that slipped through his clenched teeth and open twisting mouth. His heart was an agitated caged beast against his sternum, kicking and palpitating and he was sure the doctor knew because over her steel-tempered face concern was cast. The pain burnt out everything else, gnawing at the lining of his stomach, knotting in his chest, coaxing sheets of salty sweat that stung his fresh wounds and beating hotly in his eye in time with his pulse. He grasped for empty spaces. 

The red slough encased everything. He swore it stuck to his hair, leached into his clothes. His stomach was seizing, rippling, the back of his throat contracting in swallow after swallow, but nothing came of it other than a heightened ache. Like the new seams from his Hyperion tech were going to split his skull apart with the tension. His vision was swimming. Bogged by red. It had to stop, it had to stop, and he wanted to ball himself into a fetal position until it passed but he could not move either arm now. He began jerking, over and over, breath hitching in his throat with each seize of his chest. The doctor's face was now simply a black dot, mottled with that fucking color. He cried. Seized. And cried. He could not control the shapes his mouth made. His eye was glowing but it burnt a hole in his head. He could not stop himself from analyzing whatever his eye flitted to, even as he lost control of his limbs and his breathing became sporadic. An endless flow of information. Potted plant, a gift from Yvette, given at approximately 2:38pm, known as a succulent in botany, thickened and fleshy to retain water in hot conditions. Blank, white panelling on the hospital walls, up to code, painted in a color called 'baby powder'. In the room next to his, a woman named Ewa in critical care's favorite color was yellow. The surgeon was 38 and had no criminal record. The doctor's maiden name was Hensley and her family had a history of heart disease. Rhys' body clenched, abdomen surging forward. Information spilt from every facet, and he could not quell his mind.

The doctor said something that sounds like 'sedative', and exactly six new cords are attached to his bare chest. His ears rung. An erratic heartbeat and the whirring machines. The doctor was saying something to him, smiling like they always do but her brow overhung that feigned twist on her lips and he knew there was something wrong. He wanted to tell her to tear this necrotic eye from its socket and take back the tech, because he was sure it was killing him.

And then it stopped. Rather anticlimactic. 

There was nothing. Not even the soft hiss of the respirator. He did not dream, only the frigid void of drug-induced sleep caressed him. But in the wake of what he would later call a fever dream (more to reassure himself than it actually being the truth), he would welcome it.

He had to get his bearings when he woke up.

The unsettling atmosphere was punctuated by the cold and scaly quality of Vaughn's silence. He hadn't noticed Rhys's eyes had dwindled open until his ECHOeye lit up palpably and began to rove away from its stagnant state. Vaughn's gaze arrested him,  
with interjected finger. Curiosity and worry coalesced together on his face.

"Holy shit."

That's Vaughn's first words to him. A gravelly sound akin to laughing came from Rhys, who still had a tube in his mouth and who still had a obscenely swollen eye. He could have died! And all Vaughn could manage was that. His best buddy looked concerned at the sound of his laugh, and who could blame him? It resembled the sound a dying skag makes, and it ricocheted in his chest and cracked his voice. Like he had decades of phlegm stuck in his throat. And then, even worse, Rhys tried to speak.

"Bruh--!"

His voice was quivering, straining, grating against his throat. He attempted to clear his throat but he could not swallow his own saliva very well! Hence the tube! God, he would not regard this memory fondly. His throat closed around the syllables but he still barked them out, several steps beyond simply scratchy or gruff. 

"Vuh--ah--"

Vaughn looked startled. 

"Heyheyhey bro, you don't have to talk. In fact, it's advisable that you don't. Could get brain damage or something."

Vaughn shook his head, frowning momentarily. But it was passing. His eyes scoured the state-of-the-art robotic limb, smirking all the while.

"How's that new Hyperion tech? Looks sweet. Especially that eye; you look like a badass." 

Rhys' arm became animated at the elbow, showing off his sweet new advancement. But then it tugged against the sinews of his shoulder. He winced at the splintering pain, and let his arm fall lax. 

"You're like a... cyborg now, Rhys! It's gonna be hell going through metal detectors, though."

 


	2. the one around me will crush me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vaughn expresses worry and Rhys gets his rocks off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another edition of this fic! I hope you guys enjoy! Some smut in this one, so warning for that. The binary means things, but it's in your hands to translate it and work out what it might mean for later in the plotline. Right now, the puzzle pieces might not fall together to make a cohesive picture when it comes to the binary text though.

 

> 01000100 01001001 01000100 00100000 01011001 01001111 01010101 00100000 01010100 01001000 01001001 01001110 01001011 00100000 01011001 01001111 01010101 00100000 01000011 01001111 01010101 01001100 01000100 00100000 01000110 01001111 01001100 01001100 01001111 01010111 00100000 01001001 01001110 00100000 01001101 01011001 00100000 01000110 01001111 01001111 01010100 01010011 01010100 01000101 01010000 01010011
> 
> 01011001 01001111 01010101 00100000 01000001 01010010 01000101 00100000 01001010 01010101 01010011 01010100 00100000 01000001 01001110 01001111 01010100 01001000 01000101 01010010 00100000 01010111 01001111 01010010 01010100 01001000 01001100 01000101 01010011 01010011 00100000 01001000 01011001 01010000 01000101 01010010 01001001 01001111 01001110 00100000 01000011 01001111 01000100 01000101 00100000 01001101 01001111 01001110 01001011 01000101 01011001

“Dude.”

“What?”

“You’re bleeding.”  
  
Served him for being a workaholic. Should’ve listened to Vaughn before, he knew that he never made inflammatory comments just to make them. Too much paperwork too soon after his procedure, too much stress on his plate. It’s like when the poor people working in manufacturing get massive migraines when they work for too long. Some pass out while working, even lose their eyesight later in life. Rhys brought his fingertips to the source, dabbing right beneath his cupid’s bow, ‘the philtrum’ his ECHO eye corrected, retracting his fingers to oogle at it.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, ‘fuck’. You need to learn to relax. I mean, I know you’re trying to get a promotion, but if you keep this up you’re going to get a brain aneurysm or something.”

He slumped against his chair’s backrest, countenance shifting to something vague and unreadable. Digging in his pocket, he retrieved a handkerchief and pressed it solidly against his nose. He knew that it would probably stain, and nobody carried around a blood-stained handkerchief so he’d have to buy a new one, and that in itself was another note on his to-do list, but if he had let the blood just flow the front of his shirt would be mottled with it and he’d have to dry clean it and--

Rhys groaned, bringing his free hand against his temple. The pseudo-headaches he got felt like little lightning bolts through his frontal lobe. And they were damn relentless. Always popping up whenever he needed his brain power the most. He drew up his eyes to meet Vaughn’s, a semi-scowl on his face. Mocking.

“Alright, mom.”

His tone was leagues away from the measured cadences that he employed when speaking to.. literally any other Hyperion co-worker. And he knew that if he spoke to anybody else like that he could get in a shitstorm, especially to Henderson (no matter how much he wanted to) or Vasquez (he had to bite his tongue, not even figuratively). He had to stick to his methods of undercutting people with doubletalk, like Handsome Jack had so skillfully done. Vaughn was his best pal. It’s not like he had to mask his true feeling with that signature upturned-nose and feigned smile that he had to with everybody. He trusted Vaughn wouldn’t rat him out to his superiors like everybody else would. This journey to the top was a shared experience. There was no kicking down the ladder on his part.

“Come on, man. Let’s get you back home, let’s have a drink, let’s do something other than work! You’re killing me. ”

The interface on Rhys’s arm stirred to life, and he waded through a cacophony of information idly, as if to ward off Vaughn.

“We can relax when we’re rich.”

The nosebleed was passing. This time, when he removed the handkerchief from his nose, a geyser of blood didn’t spring forth. He put the tarnished cloth on his desk and continued to swipe through data, reminding himself why he got all this tech in the first place and filing whatever fun with Vaughn he might have begun to anticipate into the very back of his mind. Getting ahead was his primary concern, and most would not have been so keen on employing an average joe with a plastic prosthetic. And that same poor sod in the position Handsome Jack once occupied was simply an unattainable dream. He flexed his fingers, closing the bionic hand and, in turn, the blue interface.

“We’ll never get rich if you die from stress.”

That statement sat in the air for a couple of moments.

And then, with an exhalation, Rhys cocked his head at Vaughn. The stone-tempered facade had dislocated. What was once a grimace had been replaced by the slightest twist on his lips and the furrowing of his brows had ceased, wordlessly signalling that he finally caved and was going to tag along on whatever Vaughn was going to do.

“Fine. But if Henderson puts fire under my ass for not getting this done, I’m blaming you.”

“Fair enough.” 

> 00100000 01001001 00100000 01000001 01001101 00100000 01010100 01001000 01000101 00100000 01000111 01001111 01000100 01000100 01000001 01001101 01001110 00100000 01001000 01000101 01010010 01001111 00101110 00100000

Drinks were routine. Vaughn was a light-weight, and went quiet once he got past the ‘buzzed’ stage to avoid saying stupid things. Rhys kept himself right on the edge of sober, both to numb the pain his port and ECHO eye were giving him and to keep things interesting. The duo watched bad television for awhile, talking about their days as Hyperion underlings and how that was all going to change. Most of their discussions revolved around that, but Rhys was not exceptionally talkative when the conversation inevitably veered to his new implants and his arm. He kind of stonewalled him when he brought that up or just went for more booze. Six beers later, Vaughn decided he’d gone over his limit and retired to his bedroom without much of an adieu. Which left Rhys alone in the living room.

Some typical Hyperion propaganda was blaring on the TV. It was boring, but enough to keep Rhys occupied, and the drink in his glass was enough to keep him teetering on pleasantly drunk. It was always sad to drink alone. But the various faces of Handsome Jack on his walls kept him good company for the time being.

Handsome Jack is always watching.

Rhys rested his head against the couch, shakily expelling the air from his lungs. The thrumming against his temples felt like the distant memory of a pain, like the faint imprint of someone’s boot in snow. Instead of incessant droning in his ears there was only an ever-so soft electronic hum from the base of his skull. His mind veered from the TV to the posters bedecking the walls. And their subject matter. His eyes hooded. The savior of Pandora, the CEO of Hyperion, the man who he had once saw in an office window. He was so brazen, blatant in his display of his power, he seemed to exude it out of every single pore of his being. Rhys’s heart began to beat as if a heaven-sent storm hurled it into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings. Rhys closed his eyes.

Handsome Jack wants YOU.

Jack represented wealth, power, anything that didn’t have to do with the banality of a desk job. Oh, Jack was something. Something unattainable to just any other boring dude who did paperwork, something mysterious and nuanced. Everything he’d been groomed to be on Helios. He served as a perfect explanation representation of Rhys’s goals and the perfect excuse for why Rhys was thinking dogmatically or why he sometimes couldn’t see past his own nose. He could retort paraphrased quotes by him, that there are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries and some met who cross them like bridges and keep going. Stepping over the embalming sludge every uninspired worker was content in marinating in was a process every powerful hero had to go through. And Handsome Jack was the most powerful of all heroes.

A rotten, vulgar feeling of power uncorked itself from a dormant wellspring in Rhys’s mind, and he soon found himself making eye contact with one of the posters. It was one of those popular ones about how Handsome Jack was the savior of Pandora, another propaganda piece that used to cover every wall on Helios in his heyday. Rhys rose from the couch to situate himself on a lone swivel chair, peering into the posters inanimate eyes like it might hold the secret to success. What he was doing was weird. But what could one expect from a guy who was intoxicated, isolated, and probably a bit stir-crazy? When his senses were bogged down by booze, he had the tendency to linger on certain topics and details. With an overactive imagination, too, he found himself completely entranced by the image of Handsome Jack. His thoughts ranged from disjointed conceptions of what it would be like to be the CEO of Hyperion to fantasies about Handsome Jack himself. And the unraveling began.

The gratification he got from the reveries of grandeur and Handsome Jack were not necessarily unprecedented; he got randomly turned on by a bunch of weird things. And this happened to be something that he got a huge kick out of, which was evident in the pooling of heat in his lower abdomen. He propped one palm against the side of the poster. He caught his lower lip in his teeth. And began unzipping his pants. The smiling face of the Hyperion _overlord_ was enough fuel to get him going, and with Vaughn sleeping tight in the other room he got more privacy than he normally got in their flat. He was free, fully, to deal with whatever chub he was beginning to sport and eventually freed himself from the confines of his tight dress pants.

He let the dam break on this one. He had eons to think of fantasies, and had developed an array of comprehensive scenes he could slip into whenever necessary. In the one of the (simpler) fantasies in his mind's eyes, Handsome Jack took Rhys to his quarters (which he imagined all gilded like a big bauble), and he fucked him. First with Rhys's legs drawn up against his chest with quick thrusts and Rhys meeting him with a paralleled ferocity—his own quibbling mouth grasping at kisses and hips arching—rocking himself down onto Jack's cock. 'Oh,' Rhys would breathe, 'Jack— Yeeeess— Fuck,' in spur-of-the-moment wanton fashion. Jack wouldn’t respond, or would cover his mouth and tell him to shut the fuck up because he always babbled when in that state. And he’d obey that, because beneath Jack, Rhys would shake; desperate, eyes shut, words lost as pleasure encapsulated him.

The thought of being so thoroughly undone struck him, and how Rhys suffered! It was clear in the jerky, furtive motions and the needy clutches at his cock, the grunting, groaning, the grind of his hips against what _should’ve_ been Jack's, the deliberate curve of his back, the arching into air. In his fantasies, a dead man fucked him until he shuddered, helpless. His free hand, normally used to stabilize him, was now yanking his dress shirt up, to expose his stomach to the imaginary Jack.

Rhys opened his eyes, and the poster looked into them, unflinching. That disinterested snarl on Jack’s lips, the casual confidence that many attempted to emulate. All over from there, of fucking course. Making eye contact with even a poster of Jack had that effect on him. Rhys's unraveling came, fast, in a muted shout from deep in the chest (trembling fingers smothering some of the sound) and then a spattering of his cum against his bare stomach. Rhys slumped forward, and in his mind Jack fucked him until he finished, too. Until Rhys was whimpering from it, limp, fingernails cutting into those shoulders. But in reality, he simply removed his fist from his softening cock and slowly took his walk of shame to the nearest cloth to wipe himself off with.

> 01010010 01000101 01000001 01001100 01001100 01011001 00101100 00100000 01010100 01001111 00100000 01000001 00100000 01010000 01001111 01010011 01010100 01000101 01010010 00100000 01001111 01000110 00100000 01001101 01000101 00111111 00100000 01000011 01001111 01001101 01000101 00100000 01001111 01001110 00100001 00100000

By the time he reached the side table, a nosebleed was beginning.

 


End file.
